Soccer Thread

Welcome to the football/soccer thread. This thread is specifically designed for the discussion of recent fixtures, matches, tournaments, competitions, transfers... - you name it - and anything else related to football that has happened in recent times. Feel free to discuss anything football-related that has happened in the news, or even at your local club if you play for one.

A Few Rules:
1. SPPf and Misc. Entertainment rules.
2. Don't spam/flame/troll
3. No fanboyisms please. What I mean is, don't come in here with nothing more to your post saying anything other than "Woo Go Manchester United!" or similar. I've seen people doing it before in this thread and it is quite annoying, so please don't do it, as it's spam.
4. Don't argue or quibble. It's pointless and leads to nothing, ultimately.
5. And for Goodness sake, please don't tell me that I should've called it the "Football thread". It's already been discussed a few posts down on this page (and a few others for that matter), and if it gets brought up again I'll just report you for trolling. It's called "The Soccer Thread" because "soccer" is a more universally understood word for the sport football. In other words, it will stop the topic from being potentially derailed by NFL fans posting before reading the topic or even just a few posts back.

Crouchy to Stoke looks set to go through. Fulham and Newcastle fighting over David Ruiz looks interesting. Probably the most interesting deadline day is over in Serie A: Pjanic from Lyon to Roma for 8m! (Arsenal should have looked there not at Arteta) Whilst Internazionale have replaced Eto'o with Zarate and Forlan to fit Gasperini's 3-4-3 system.
Arsenal are looking to revive a deal for Arteta and seem to be closing on Yossi, but personally I think they've left it far too late in the window. They knew months ago Cesc was leaving and if they had acted then wouldv'e done better. Also talk of overpaying is ridiculous, you can't tell me that Ashley Young and Downing (15m/17m) are worse than Gervinho (14m)

Arsenal have only started moving now because of the 8-2 loss, and Wenger really is starting to feel under pressure as a manager. Whatever they can salvage in the next few minutes won't be good enough to keep them fighting for the title, I can almost assure you.

Arsenal got Mertesacker for around £10 million today. It's a decent price for a solid, experienced defender which is desperately needed especially after we got raped 8-2 last weekend. Looking to hopefully see a great partnership with Vermelaen form.

Mertesacker is sadly (Like Koscielny, Squillaci, Dareisay bramble..) prone to an error and the odd nightmareish day. But on his day he is a very good defender. Arsenals problems aren't quite as deep as people make out, Wenger did get his tactics wrong and they are hugely depleted with injuries and suspensions but still the squad is too weak to challenge for the title.
Tim Vickery rates Andre Santos so that's good enough for me, whilst Park Chu Yung has never really lit up ligue 1 like his early season promised too. They all seem like panic buys. If wenger had moved earlier in the market he could have done much better. The other day he talked about not spending money on players for the sake of it, and not on players he didn't think were better than his own. Which makes me question some of the current transfer targets somewhat.

Arteta and Benayoun to Arsenal! Arteta cost £10-11 million approximately and Yossi came on loan. Arteta is a good player, a little old at 29 but can make things happen and Yossi still got some tricks so I wonder how they'll fit in the starting XI.

I'm happy with what my favorite team, Barcelona, (I bandwagoned when Ronaldinho was there, lol) did this season. Adding Cesc Fabregas is a great addition for us. He scored a goal in his first match, so that's always a good sign. Most importantly, may he help us whoop Real Madrid's behinds. Go Barca!